Friday, May 22, 2009

Making Crayon Scribblers

Well, we've seen a lot of other people make "scribblers", so we decided that it was about time to try! The kids found a large box of old crayon pieces and got to work taking the paper labels off. We worked on this a little bit at a time over about 4 days.

A muffin tin was placed on the table, and everyone got to create their own color combinations.

We preheated the oven to 300 degrees and watched the crayons melt pretty quickly! Once they looked like they had reached a liquid state, we took the tin out of the oven, let it cool for a few minutes, then placed it in the freezer for 1/2 hour.

Our first batch came out OK...most of them broke. We realized that we might have let them melt too long and freeze too long, so we watched the next batch a little closer.

The second batch came out better and only a couple of the scribblers broke. Our third batch was perfect!

The kids had fun drawing with their scribblers (even the broken pieces!). What a fun way to reuse old crayons and make something that is beautiful and artistic.

Hi Dawn! Thanks for the nice note. This also became a science experiment, of sorts, as we realized that different brands of crayons had different melting points. Lots of neat discussions about the science of melting crayons!

What a fun post!We made this type of crayon and used little paper cups to melt the broken crayons in. I cooked them on a very low heat and then after they hardened and cooled on the counter we peeled away the paper cups...I even just love the beauty of the colors swirled together when they are not being used! : )

i tried this once, it didn't work at all. the different types of crayons melted differently from each other, some just turned into liquid, clear oil it seemed - and the fumes! i might have had the wrong type(s) of crayons, but i haven't read a warning about this anywhere.

Hi Therese! I believe that you are right. We noticed that the Crayola ones melted differently from the cheaper ones and the sparkly ones. Watching them melt through the oven was key so that they didn't overcook and we could tell when the last bit of crayon finally liquified. And, not freezing them too long, too!